Persona 3: Those Voices at Night

[DF Ash]

Five years ago I posted my first video on AMV, and I was determined to stick with Windows Movie Maker until I'd finished one really good, site-worthy video (because hey, if I can make a good AMV with Movie Maker, then I'll be more than ready for what any other editor can offer). The last video I made involved a week of caffeine-fueled editing. This one took several months.

But I think it's been worth it...




The video source material is Persona 3 FES (NA release), processed and saved through PSS Demux, AVISynth and VirtualDubMod as uncompressed .avi's. The deinterlaced video was then edited in Windows Movie Maker 5.1 (which really, really struggled to keep up with it all) with a custom WMV9 profile: 640 * 360 square-pixel letterbox format, 29.97 fps, 3.5 MB/s constant bit rate. The audio source is an uncompressed .wav from the CD, converted to WMA10 Pro, 192kbps, 96 kHz, 2-channel 24 bit constant rate.

I don't think there's anything I can say about the video itself, except that it pushed Windows Movie Maker past the edge of what I thought was possible. It's by far the most ambitious thing I've done, and definitely marks the upper limit of what I can do with WMM. So, after a long rest, it's off to the store to buy Vegas or Adobe...

Comments/opinions are definitely appreciated - thanks for watching!

[CodeZTM]

/loves Persona and is currently replaying

/ghets

[Hagaren Viper]

Nnng, where's the preview button, I cant download on this comp!

/ghets later

[OropherZero]

does this vid have footage from 'the answer' ? I've only finished the journey atm so don't want the answer ending ruined or anything D=

[DF Ash]

It uses some images from The Answer, but not in a way that'd spoil anything. The video's just about The Journey. =)

[ReggieSmalls]

Nice job I really liked this even tho I feel like some of the effects were unnecessary but I still enjoyed it and I love Persona one of my personal fav RPG's, I still need to play part 4.

[DF Ash]

Gracias! It's one of mine too (I've never played any game that captured the feel of an anime series, of playing through a whole season's worth of storylines, the way P3 does), and the video was born just from hearing the lyric "the Dream Maker's gonna make you mad" and thinking of the Velvet Room (and it grew from there... and grew, and grew).

(I'm a little into P4 right now and, though the game mechanics are smoother and the story's interesting, I kinda liked the atmosphere of P3 better - but that's a whole different topic!)

While the special effects do have a narrative logic (the shattering marks the start of a mental/symbolic intermission, the lighthouse sweeps are meant to suggest a clock's hour hand and the Dark Hour happening "behind" the normal world, and the distortions and blurs during the first flashback that we're seeing Aigis's fractured memories of the experiment and aftermath), you're right, there's probably an element of just squeezing in lotsa stuff that WMM wouldn't normally handle. That's likely the most effects-heavy video I'll ever make, though. Even with a professional editor, I'll probably focus more on slower-paced mood pieces, and leave this video as my one segue into rapid-fire editing for awhile. ^_^

I'm glad you liked it!

[Jwalk0]

I wuz gonna mention what Reggie said about your effects but after reading your meanings behind the effects I'm feelin how you edited this, even though I've never edited with WMM I already know that you don't have much freedom with it like you can with Vegas and Adobe but you did the best with what you had. Altogether you had a great concept and it's my first time hearing this song and I'm diggin it.

Imma hardcore RPG player but I just played thru and beaten Persona 3 Fes and 4 this past December and January and both games are fuckin phenomenal, I had to make an eleven minute video on YT expressing how fantastic these games are after I beat 4 and I'm praying for a fifth game. About what you said about liking P3's atmosphere better you may like it's story better too than 4, but only by a margin. P3's story's a 10 and P4's a 9.5 to me but overall I liked the characters a bit better in P4, and the battle system is a HELLUVA lot better since you can control everyone. You said you've never played a game that captured the feel of an anime series, have you've played any of the Tales games?

[DF Ash]

Thanks, I'm glad you like it (and yeah, the song's really good - I'm surprised it hadn't already been used in a video)! Yeah, WMM couldn't even do half of what's in the video by itself. The partial fade transitions were a custom effect I'd first made for an older video, and those clock-sweeps probably took half as long to work out in .xml as the rest of the video put together. From what I've read, most video editors will have an easier time with stuff like that, since they use two or more video tracks. Since Windows Movie Maker only has one, you kinda have to trick it into acting like there's two.

I haven't played the Tales games (like P3, I kept worrying that if I hadn't started the series from the beginning, I wouldn't really appreciate it), but the same people who convinced me to give P3 a try also keep saying I should play them, so they're on my list now. And hell yeah, I'd love to see Persona 5, and what Atlus can do with it on a next-gen system (though for now, I've still gotta finish P4... and save up for a PSP/P3P combo. ).

[Kireblue]

OMFG You truly deserve a medal. I'm finding it really hard to decide on what words to use, but quite frankly, this is one of the best AMVs ever made with WMM. As someone that knows every single bug, glitch, and limitation in WMM, I am truly blown away at how flawless you made this AMV.

The timings and scene changes are perfect. The way that you edited this is magnificent. And this AMV screams the fact that you mastered WMM in every single way. Once again, you truly deserve a medal. 5/5

It's by far the most ambitious thing I've done, and definitely marks the upper limit of what I can do with WMM. So, after a long rest, it's off to the store to buy Vegas or Adobe...

If you haven't already purchased your new program, I'd recommend getting Sony Vegas. The interface for Vegas is similar to WMM, so it's not very hard to make the transition. On the other hand, I feel that Adobe's interface has a slight learning curve if you are already accustomed to another program.